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Sunday, September 13, 2015

Boats And A Storm!

Yesterday (Saturday) Elaine still wasn't up to cycling strength, so I jumped on the bike and peddled along the excellent cycle paths the five miles to the centre of San Tropez ...

Spotted another couple of these horrible little things being recharged ...

The smaller boats are on one side of the harbour, as in boats up to 60ft and worth a couple of million ...

Apparently L'Opera is one of the places to be seen in San Tropez ...

The other side of the harbour is the place to see the super yachts, and nearly all of them were flying British flags ...

Most of these boats were in the 100-120 ft class and all had jet propulsion drives ...

Incredibly ugly I.M.H.O. ...

The name on the fender says it all ...

That's more my price range ...

It's a great place to people watch ...

Gendarme, complete with crutch!! He was quite old ...

MY Seanna was one of the larger boats in the port, you can see the crew member cleaning the bridge windows. You can charter this boat during the summer for £300,000 $600,000 AUD a week!

Once I got back to base we just sat on the beach for a while before retiring to the van. As we were moving the next morning we, or should I say Elaine, suggested that we pack the van up and stow away the table, chairs, BBQ, ground sheet, pot plants and bikes etc. The weather forecast was also predicting thunderstorms coming through in the early hours, so pack everything away we did.

Boy were we lucky, the storms hit at 03.00 and it was mega!! We were nice and snug in the van so didn't take too much notice of what was going on outside. The second one hit at about 05.30 and was too loud to sleep through. I opened the blinds to see a river running past the van!

Behind us were a young couple Belgian couple in a tent ... we don't know when they packed up in the night but they had packed up and gone! The water would have been flowing straight through their tent, poor things!

By 07.00 it had virtually stopped, but the campsite was destroyed! We went for a walk about before checking out and everybody was mopping up, every awning left up was buggered and the contents flooded ...

This is the pathway (tunnel) that leads under the road to the beach ...

We were away by 11.00 and headed straight up the hills behind San Tropez leaving the madness behind us ...

This is the France we like....it must be an age thing! A few years ago we would always have gone to the crowded buzzy places!

These villages are picture postcard stuff ...

This part of the journey reminded us so much of the Aussie bush, even complete with black burnt trees where a bush fire had gone through ...

Hi Tech tonight, that's us where the blue dot is ...

We are moored up in a free Aire with one other motorhome for company in the little village of Sillans La Cascade ...

We went for a walk around the very quaint deserted village ... we couldn't even get a beer as the pub was shut!

As always I checked out the war memorial. Apart from the WW1 and WW2 names there was also a plaque to the resistance fighters that were sent to the concentration camps. It's not often you see a war memorial with the inscription 'Victims of the Barbaric Nazis!'

This is the local town hall ...

A very clear water river runs through the village. It leads to a famous waterfall, which we will check out in the morning ...

Once we got back to our base we had a good chat to our friendly neighbour, Fraanz, who is Dutch but lived in Oxfordshire for thirty years before retiring to a little alpine village in France ... which, coincidentally, we visited recently and blogged about here! He and his wife live near the village St Jean St Nicolas. He also skis every year in the local mountain range, the lucky bugger ...

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About Us

Why is this blog called the 'Manly Ferry' you may ask! Well, we are two poms - previously living in Sydney, Australia - which is the home of the real 'Manly Ferry'!
In March 2012 we left Oz and travelled to the UK where we moved aboard our Narrowboat 'Caxton', which we fully planned to rename 'NB The Manly Ferry' but it was too pretty to change it! We also brought our animals with us from Oz ... Bombo, Sam (dogs), Geoffrey, William and Jaffa (cats).
In April 2014 we sold our beloved narrowboat and replaced her with a motorhome, in which we explored a fair bit of Europe and a bit more of Blighty!
In Oct 14 we travelled to Spain (Mojacar) in our Citroen C3, along with our dogs, Bombo and Sam*, where we stayed in an apartment until the end of November, when we headed back to the UK. We were going to head back to Oz but had a change of plans so in Feb 2015 we bought ourselves a new motorhome, also called the 'Manly Ferry'.
So, we are now embarking on some brand new adventures in the UK and Europe !
My gorgeous wife Elaine passed away on 18th August 2016 aged 54. Now there is just me and the two doggies Bombo and Sammie